That work bolstered the idea that placoderms weren’t, in fact, their own odd group that dead-ended hundreds of millions of years ago — some were actually the ancestors of bony fish (and thus humans). But it was just one fossil, Ahlberg notes. “You don’t want to draw too big of conclusions from one animal.”
Two animals, though, is a different story. Qilinyu, the new fossil Ahlberg and colleagues describe, had an armored skull and trunk and was probably about the length of a box of tissues. Like Entelognathus, Qilinyu has a three-part, bony fish–like jaw, though the creature looks a bit more like a typical placoderm, Ahlberg says. The two fossils “form almost perfect intermediates” between placoderms and bony fishes, he says. Ahlberg and his colleagues suspect the key jaw elements of bony fish (and all land vertebrates) evolved from those bony blades of placoderms.
That jaw arrangement just happened to be the most successful one in the environment over evolutionary time, and those who had it seemed to out survive their com padres.
No junior, you are not related to a fish. But maybe you should be.
The “laws” of evolution are evidently as politically correct as global warming “science.” This is evidenced by evolution laws being revised every time a dog digs up a strange bone in the backyard.
It was a long way to the Coelocanth. (Which still exists).
I don’t care how armored the fish is, we shouldn’t be letting anyone or anything rewrite our history.
I don’t care how armored the fish is, we shouldn’t be letting anyone or anything rewrite our history.
I don’t care how armored the fish is, we shouldn’t be letting anyone or anything rewrite our history.
It’s late; I’m tired. I thought this was about the history of the Jews.